His reasons for leaving Germany were mainly economic: as he was recently married, he needed a more regular income than he could gain from giving occasional private classes in mathematics and attending to various contests of inventions.

His talent was noticed and he was appointed to be the first secretary of the Livonian Charitable and Economic Society (Livländische gemeinnützige und ökonomische Sozietät) founded in 1796 in Riga, the capital of Livonia, for the promotion of science and new ideas of management.

Although King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden had founded the Academia Gustaviana in 1632, it had ceased to exist in 1710 when Peter the Great had conquered the Baltic Sea provinces.

In his inaugural speech at the opening ceremony of the University he said, addressing the students: According to the memoirs of Parrot's contemporaries, these words made an inextinguishable impression.

Appealing to the ideal of enlightened monarchy, Parrot expressed his gratitude to the Tsar who had ordered the reopening of the university, and repeated the promise to honestly serve science and the whole humanity.

In the same year, he retired from the University of Dorpat and continued his work as a head of the physics laboratory of the Academy of Sciences in Saint Petersburg.